Marketing to Women Online

Differences Between Women and Men Entrepreneurs

When men and women start companies, do they approach the process the same way?  Are there key differences?  And how do those differences affect the success of the business venture?

For answers to these questions, I turned to Cynthia Kocialski.  Cynthia is the founder of three tech start-ups companies. In the past 15 years, she has been involved in dozens of start-ups.Cynthia writes the Start-up Entrepreneur's Blog and is the author of Startup From The Ground Up - Practical Insights for Entrepreneurs, How to Go from an Idea to New Business.

I asked Cynthia to pull on her experience and expertise to answer the question....

Are there differences between men and women entrepreneurs?

Take it away Cynthia!

Why Women Need to Brag More Often

I recently taught a seminar on "Shameless Self-Promotion" for women professionals.   In my research, I've found that men are more comfortable sharing their accomplishments than women are   And that's what self-promotion is all about - sharing your accomplishments and success stories.  

BRAG is not a four-letter word

I LOVED this post by Karen Deis at Mortgage Girlfriends about a recent incident where she shared an impressive accomplishment, but was accused of "bragging" by a female reader.

“B-r-a-g” is NOT a 4-letter word!

I recently posted a comment my Facebook page that I was proud of the fact that during the month of June, my Twitter posts were re-tweeted 917 times.

But, my “pride bubble” burst when I got a private message (in so many words) telling me to “quit bragging”. It was from a woman (who I don’t know personally).

Then I noticed something.

Tips for Women on Marketing to Men

I work with a lot of guys who want to do a better job of marketing to and selling to women.  

Recently, I've started working more with women who want to do a better job of marketing and selling to men.  

So here's an example of how to market to men by BoostCTR.com. We'll look at specific things this company does that you can apply to your own efforts to do a better job of marketing to men.

How Women Make Buying Decisions

 
I was reading an article about what men love about women, and came across an interesting point.

The article is written from a man's point of view by author Aaron Traister.  He shares this story about how women solve problems, vs. how men solve problems. 

We love how you solve problems.
The rabbi describes the way his wife tackles obstacles as full of drama: She rages, she cries, she internalizes everything. Her system of problem-solving takes a long time and involves making everything personal and leading with her emotions in a quest to see how she would feel about each possible solution. It is apparently a very stressful process. In contrast, the rabbi's problem-solving method is to just try to find the fastest fix. When I asked him why he preferred his wife's method, he said it was because "her decisions always end up being the right ones, whereas mine always end up being the quick ones."

Interesting point of view.    While I don't agree completely with his word choices, there is a note of truth to what he says.  It has to do with the  brain differences between men and women and how it affects how each of us makes decisions, including buying decisions.

The Ad Industry NeedsTo Tap Into Its Feminine Side

 

Speaking at the recent M2W Conference, Marti Barletta made an important comment

“Stop treating women as targets and start treating them as assets.  We should look at ways we can help women rather than ‘target’ them and make them do stuff."

If brands, marketers and agencies are going to be successful in the new digital age, they need to look at customers and clients as assets, as partners, and trusted allies.  They need to get rid of adversarial language and tactics. In short.....

The ad industry needs to start communicating like a woman, rather than a man.

Male Vs. Female Communication Style

For over five years I've been researching the difference between male and female communication style. 

Are Women Indecisive?

 
  
I do a lot of work with the financial industry, training people to do a better job of selling to women.   One complaint that I hear often is, "women can't make up their mind," "women are too slow to make a decision," or  "I prefer working with men because they're quicker to pull the trigger."

Just for the record, it isn't just men that feel this way.  Many women in the financial industry have the same complaint. 

Are they right?  Are women indecisive?   The answer is, no.  Women simply have a more deliberate decision making process.   While female clients may take more time to close, they are worth it.  Let's look at why.

Women have longer checklists

When making a buying decision, women have a longer checklist of things that matter to them. 

In Re-Render the Gender, Tom Jordan shares an example of his father buying a condo.  Look at the different checklists of what a man and a woman look for when buying a condo.

The guy takes a look around, makes sure he's getting a good price, and he's pretty much ready to buy.  But you can see that the woman has a longer checklist of criteria that matters to her when buying a condo.  Until she's satisfied everything on the list has been addressed, she's not ready to buy.

Women are more risk aware

Notice I didn't say women are more risk averse.  They are simply hard-wired to plan ahead to try to avoid bad outcomes.  Think back to hunter-gatherer days when men were focused on the short-term outcome - hunting their pray to bring home that night to eat. Women were focused on longer-term objectives, like having enough food to last the winter.  

In a study on how men and women make investments, they measured brain activity in the subjects as they made investment decisions.  In men, the reward center of the brain lit up.  In women, the reward center lit up, but so did the consequence center.

When making buying decisions, she is planning ahead, wondering what will happen down the road, and wondering what might go wrong and who might be affected.

How to speed up a woman's buying process

At this point, sales people have a better understanding of her decision making process, but still want to know if there's anything they can do to speed it up - to get her to "yes" faster.

There are three things you can do to speed up a woman's buying process

1. Address her concerns and objections.   It's important to find out what her concerns and objections are as early as possible.   If a woman says no, it's usually because she has a concern that hasn't been adequately addressed.  
2. Use testimonials.  Have you worked successfully with women in the past?   Get those women to write you a testimonial.  Better yet, have them record a video.  Let those women share, in their own words, what they like about working with you.  Let the women sell you rather than selling yourself. The second reason why you lose a sale with a woman is because she does not trust you.
3. Sell with stories, not facts.  Don't just list out features and benefits.  Share a story about how someone in a similar situation used the product or service. Stories are more memorable and make that emotional connection that motivates women to take action. (And just FYI, stories are a great selling technique for men as well.)

If you care about client retention, you want women clients.

Because women are more deliberate, because they put more time and research into their decisions, they tend to be more confident in those decisions.   Women are more loyal to individual service providers (aka financial service providers) than men. 

If you care about referrals, you want women clients.

Women refer more often than men do.  Ask any woman how she found her financial adviser, pediatrician, hair stylist, and she'll tell you, "a friend recommended him/her."  

When you do a good job with women, they notice, especially if it's an industry, like the financial industry, where she feels she's been ignored, or misunderstood.  If she has a good experience, she's going to share it with her friends and family and recommend you.

The choice is yours.  You can view women as indecisive and not waste your time with them.  But chances are a smart competitor is out there making a serious effort to sell to women and seeing the financial rewards because of it.

 

Can Men Create and Run Brands Aimed At Women?

I was fortunate enough to have lunch with Tony Fannin of Be Branded fame before the holidays.  What fun!   We had a fascinating discussion.  

Tony asked one question that particularly got my attention:

“Can a company, whose upper management and board is made up of almost all men, really have any real insight on how to market to women? And, is that a defendable position when their customers begin looking at the management and board and not seeing women being properly represented?”

You'll find my answer here - Brands for Women Run By Men.

How Men and Women Communicate

One of my all-time favorite movies is Lars and the Real Girl.  There's a magical scene in the movie where Lars and a female co-worker (with whom there's a mutual attraction) have an exchange in the office lunch room.

I'll let you watch the scene, then we'll talk about what we can learn about how men and women communicate. 

Women have more connections to the verbal centers of the brain.  Women often talk out problems.  Men are hard-wired to take action.   While he may not be able to express himself verbally, he often finds other ways to express himself.

Female Humor

In my research on why moms blog, I've come across some of the funniest material I've ever seen.

This makes me happy for so many reasons.  So many of the movies and TV shows and, yes, commercials that are supposed to be "hilarious" can't even get a harrumph out of me.    (With the exception of Nurse Jackie which is just pure brilliance.)

I have also been studying humor writing.   And one of the things that makes material funny is that it strikes us as true.   I suspect that's why I enjoy so many humor blogs written by women.    There's just this sense of "I have SO totally been there."   

What I Learned About Women and Design at an Art Show

For the past several months I've been doing a lot of work/research on women and design to see which design elements are most persuasive for women.

After reading Gender, Design and Marketing by Gloria Moss, I thought I'd take my new knowledge based on her book plus my own research and do a completely unscientific test at an art show.

My test was simple -look at a painting and guess whether the artist was male or female. (Then look at the caption to see if the name was male or female). The great thing about this art show was, all the paintings were the same size - so there was some uniformity, which made the research a little easier.  (Rather than trying to take size, material, etc. into consideration).

I wasn't enough of a geek to keep an actual tally of how many I got right or wrong. It was a spur of the moment idea. But it felt like my success rate was better than 50/50.